Sometimes when I’m doing a project intended for a post it turns out to be a pretty epic fail. Other times, when I put little to no thought into it, something magical happens. That’s what happened here. My family went to the beach this weekend and had a fantastic day building sand castles, playing in the water and collecting rocks. The rocks were so beautiful and plentiful, we decided it was ok to take a few home to enjoy. I really wanted to do something I hadn’t seen before with the rocks, but with awesome rock dominoes like this floating around pinterest and amazing rock art round ups like this from The Artful Parent it’s kind of hard. Luckily, it was the witching hour when we got home, so I didn’t have much time to think. I grabbed two salad spinners and some paint and 45 minutes later we were still making the most amazing rock spin art ever. This was awesome! Both my girls, 1.5 and 3 years old, could do it with very little assistance and they loved it. I’m slightly obsessed with how beautiful the rocks came out. Each rock looks like a piece of art. To see an awesome way to display your spin art rocks click here.

*This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.

The process is really simple and has so many fun components for little ones to participate in. First, they get to wash and play with the rocks. Next, they get to choose which rocks they want to put in the spinner. Amazon just started selling the ikea salad spinner!! For paints you have a few options. We have a ton of different color paints in little squeeze bottles making them easy for little hands. The Mala paints from Ikea are my absolute fav. The colors are super vibrant and they last surprisingly long. You can also buy small bottles like these non toxic tempera paints. The trick is to just squirt a little bit of paint onto the rocks in the spinner. I know, easier said than done when it comes to little kids, but with a little training they can do it! I have worked with Gigi a long time on using “a little bit,” and let me tell you, she’s got it. D is up next. So after the kids pick the rocks and place them in the spinner, they squeeze a little bit of paint on top of them. I helped my kids only put a few rocks in the spinner at once. They had the tendency to want to put about 50 in at once. You might have to do the same.

The paint looked gorgeous on the rocks before we even did anything. I knew right away we were onto something good. We closed the spinners and started turning. Both my girls needed a little help closing and opening the lids, but man, they definitely did not need help spinning the spinner. They loved this part! Spin, spin, spin. Work those muscles girls.

The results were so fantastic when we opened up the lid. We oohed and ahhhed over and over again. Definitely the trickiest part was convincing my girls not to just grab the rocks any which way they wanted because that quickly turned the spin art into mush. This took a bit of persuasive parenting finesse, but finally D crumbled and let me do it. Gigi watched me and then did it herself. Little monkeys. We had a paper nearby to hold our painted rocks for drying.

Overall, I seriously give this activity a ten. It was so much fun and the rocks came out gorgeous! I don’t know exactly what we’ll do with them yet but I’m thinking some kind of shadow box. In the meantime, we’ve put them into magnatile castles, had a tea party with them, and just recently I was awarded a bowl of them as my girls sang happy birthday to me. My birthday is in October. Have fun everybody!

Hi Janis, a salad spinner is used to dry off lettuce after you wash it. You spin it around and the water goes to the bottom. Not something I’ve ever used for salad but we definitely love it for art! There is a link in the post in the second paragraph where it says spinner. It links you directly to the one I use. Hope you give it a try. It’s a lot of fun!

THis is brilliant! We love to paint rocks at my house and this is now going on our fall/winter project list..I just saw the pinecones idea in the comments as well, I am getting giddy just thinking about what I can spin-paint

Great idea. I am an art teacher for Pre-K and Kindergarten and I love this approach to painting rocks! Have painted animal rocks with older children but your spin art sounds like a great option for younger students, as well as older students and I’ll be honest, even adults (I can’t wait to try it out)! Bravo! Thanks out for sharing!

Yes! These do totally rock.. Awesome activity and had almost everything (salad spinner, mala paints, toddler) .. apart from the rocks LOL .. we live next to a sandy beach so we tried it with shells and it worked but the colours didn’t blend quite as well on the grooved surfaces…and White just mushed all the other colours. So we finally got our hands on some pebbles because we were itching to try this activity again and WOW they are awesome and the white didn’t mush. Flatter pebbles seem to hold the colour better when spinning. Thanks for the colour filled afternoons

I found this at Pinterest and tried it in my stilles Kämmerlein (without my son). My pebbles don’t look as nice as these from your girls.
Now I have two questions:
Did you use the swedish paint pure or diluted?
And did it work better with many stones in the spinner or only with one ore a few?
Greats from Germany!

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